


Cake Is Better

by astralpenguin



Series: 3am [1]
Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Yagami Light, Author Is Venting, Bisexual L, Character Study, Coming Out, Demiromantic Yagami Light, Gen, Greyromantic Yagami Light, Hopeful Ending, Internalized Acephobia, Internalized Homophobia, L is a little shit, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Overthinking, Pre-Relationship, Sharing a Bed, Watching Someone Sleep, Yagami Light Learns Something New, Yagami Light has a Crush, Yotsuba Arc, but he does know when to be serious, namely what asexuality is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22482736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralpenguin/pseuds/astralpenguin
Summary: He wanted to kiss L. He wanted to hold on to L. He wanted to stay with L when the Kira case was over.He did not want to have sex with L.
Relationships: L/Yagami Light
Series: 3am [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640104
Comments: 56
Kudos: 430





	Cake Is Better

**Author's Note:**

> i've been having a lot of emotions about light yagami lately, okay?
> 
> this is 4.6k of projection/personal headcanon/venting that was written in its entirety in under 24 hours with no plan beyond 'L breaks it to light that he's ace' so it's kinda a mess and at one point i had to remove a paragraph because it got Too Personal. so like. read at your own risk lmao
> 
> (to people subscribed to me for tmr, normal programming will resume shortly lol)

It was 3am and L was asleep.

Light Yagami was not.

This had happened..... Once? Maybe twice before?

Whatever the exact number was, it was low enough that, when Light woke up and glanced over to L, seeing him  _ in  _ the bed and sleeping rather than  _ on  _ the bed and hunched over his laptop was surprising enough to catapult him from the sleepy state he’d been in to being wide awake.

And he didn’t think that he’d be getting back to sleep any time soon.

Damn L.

No, this wasn’t actually L’s fault. A lot about this situation  _ was  _ L’s fault. The handcuffs, them having to share a bed, and Light being used to L staying up all night in the first place, to name a few.

But L did need to sleep from time to time. It was Light’s own fault that him actually doing so was shocking enough to affect him like that.

He was in for a boring night of staring at the ceiling.

At least he didn’t need to pee. L needed to sleep. If Light had needed to pee, he’d have held it for as long as possible. He didn’t want to be responsible for L getting less sleep than he would’ve otherwise got.

Thankfully, he wasn’t in that position. Light did not need to pee.

He rolled over and looked at L.

It was strange. Light had heard that people showed their true face while they were asleep. All their cares were supposed to melt away. All their lies were supposed to disappear. They were supposed to be at peace.

L didn’t look very different from when he was awake.

He was definitely asleep though. During the first few nights of being handcuffed together, L had pretended to sleep, in what he’d claimed was an attempt to make Light feel more comfortable. The volume of his fake breathing had had the opposite effect, which led to Light telling him to knock it the fuck off.

When L was actually asleep, his breathing was slower and deeper, but not louder. No part of his body was tense or curled up in any way. He was physically relaxed.

But his face was as impassive as ever.

Light wasn’t sure what this was supposed to mean. He wasn’t sure if it was supposed to mean anything.

He’d already known that L was a good actor. Maybe the lack of a facade dropping while L was asleep meant that he didn’t act as much as Light thought he did?

No.

Wait.

L’s face  _ did  _ look different when he was asleep, different to how L acted in his Ryuga persona, or with the taskforce. Not different to how he acted when it was just him and Light.

He hadn’t done that sort of thing with Light recently.

He’d kept up the Kira accusations, sure. But it seemed that nobody could keep a mask up 24/7, not even L, and L had been acting more like his genuine self around Light.

Whatever  _ that  _ happened to be.

Or maybe Light was thinking way too hard about this, and the exact expression of L’s sleeping face held no significance whatsoever.

It wasn’t like there was anything else for him to be thinking about. He was faced with hours of waiting for the next day to come, he had to entertain himself somehow! If that meant reading too much into L’s facial expressions, then that’s what it meant.

L analysed Light’s facial expressions all the time, both awake and asleep, anyway. So it wasn’t like Light was being unfair here. At least he wasn’t going to spout some bullshit like,  _ ‘The chances of you being Kira after sleeping so peacefully have increased by 56%!!!’  _ the moment that L woke up.

That wasn’t a  _ direct  _ quote, but it might as well have been.

It occurred to Light, somewhat belatedly, that staring at someone while they sleep was generally considered to be a creepy thing to do.  
He turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

He’d never understood why people thought that watching someone sleep was creepy.

He understood  _ that _ it made most people feel uncomfortable. But he didn’t get  _ why. _ And it wasn’t like L would have any room to complain about it if he found out that Light had been watching him sleep, because wasn’t that what he did to Light? Every night?

Of all the annoyances that came with being handcuffed to L, L watching him sleep hadn’t even registered as a concern. Light didn’t care about that. So long as L didn’t keep him awake and actually  _ let _ him sleep, they were golden.

Maybe it was the vulnerability. If you’re watching someone while they sleep, then you’re watching them when they’re at their weakest. If you’re asleep, you can’t defend yourself. Anyone could do anything to you. Not wanting to be watched while asleep could’ve made the difference between life or death for some people, once upon a time. When rival clans and predators were rife, it was a real risk. The discomfort that a lot of people felt about it was probably just a lingering holdover from that.

Light knew that L wasn’t going to do anything to him while he slept.

(He also knew that that was a lot of trust to have in the guy who’d made his father pretend to shoot him and was constantly accusing him of being a serial killer, but hey. He trusted L. It had just worked out that way.)

He turned his head so he was looking at L again. L hadn’t moved.

In a way, this situation was kinda funny. Light knew that he’d never be able to tell anyone about how he’d been spending his time away from university. Not just for confidentiality reasons, but because if he told anyone that he’d spent weeks handcuffed to another man, and sharing a bed with him, then their natural assumption would be that it was a sex thing.

It wasn’t a sex thing.

Light had first questioned his sexuality when he was around 13.

Specifically, the first time that he realised that he might be somewhat different from his peers in that area was after a tennis match. He’d been getting changed back into his everyday clothes, when one of the other boys in the changing room started talking about how hot he found each of the girls. Other boys had joined in, and it hadn’t taken very long at all for what they were saying to turn more vulgar as they discussed what they wanted to do with those girls.

Light hadn’t been able to relate. At all.

But, he’d figured, maybe those boys had just been being crude, and had been exaggerating. Maybe Light was a late developer. And sure, objectively speaking, Yumi  _ was  _ pretty. Light wasn’t blind. Maybe he’d start wanting to see and touch girls in the way that those boys had been talking about when he got older.

But then he’d got older and nothing had changed.

When he was 15, he’d considered that he might be gay.

The thought of being gay was terrifying.

He’d known that his parents wouldn’t have an issue with it. They loved him, and they’d never had a bad word to say about gay people. Light was also fairly sure that his mother’s sister was in a relationship with her female ‘roommate’. If his parents were homophobic, wouldn’t they have stopped talking to her? And if they were accepting of her, then surely they’d be even more accepting of their own son?

But opinions among his classmates were mixed. He wasn’t particularly close to any of them, so he didn’t take any of their opinions personally, but what they thought and how they acted  _ did  _ affect his day to day life. And he knew that if there were people his age who were homophobic, then there were sure to be even more adults who were. He only had to take a look at the news to see that the vast majority of the world didn’t allow gay people the same rights as straight people. In fact, it was still a crime in some places, even punishable by death.

Light was supposed to be perfect. If he was gay, that would make him less than perfect in the eyes of many, and could potentially have a disasterous affect on his career prospects.

But he didn’t like girls. He didn’t like girls, which surely meant that he had to be gay.

He’d never told his family, or anyone at school. At 15, he was already getting enough anonymous love confessions stuffed into his locker that he knew that he could have any girl he wanted. He could just pretend that he wasn’t gay. He could grow up and marry a girl that his family and the world would love, and they could have a perfect family of their own, and his own discomfort with the whole thing would never need to be known by anyone.

The thing was, if he was a gay man, then that meant that he had to like men.

And he wasn’t so sure that he did.

Whenever he thought back to any of the times he’d heard boys talk about girls, and tried to flip it so he was thinking those kinds of things about boys, he’d just ended up making himself uncomfortable. Just like he had no desire to see any of the girls’ tits, he equally had no desire to see any of the boys’ dicks.

There were a brief few months when he was 16 when he’d thought that, seeing as he was equally disinterested in everyone, he had to be bisexual. But he’d never felt wholly comfortable describing himself as that. His interest in everyone  _ was  _ equal, yes, but that was because it was nonexistent for everyone.

Having sex was supposed to be a rite of passage. It was supposed to be something that everyone wanted to do. It was supposed to be a natural part of being human.

If he didn’t have that, then what did that make him?

How could he be perfect if he didn’t want something that everyone was supposed to want?

L was still asleep.

Light sighed.

L.

L was a problem.

Light hadn’t ever wanted to have sex with anyone before. No men, no women, no one who fell anywhere else on the spectrum, nobody. Not even Misa, and that was the final proof he’d needed to confirm once and for all that he’d  _ never _ be attracted to women. She was a famous model and actress, she was objectively conventionally attractive, and she was obsessed with him. If he wasn’t interested in her, then he was never going to be interested in any woman. He was sure of that.

But L?

Light didn’t want to have sex with him.

He’d considered it. He was being forced to spend every hour of every day less than six feet away from him, so Light was pretty sure that if he was going to be willing to have sex with anybody, by this point it would probably be L.

The fact that his mind framed it as ‘willing to’ rather than ‘want to’ summed it all up, in his opinion.

Because he did like L! He liked L more than he should! He liked spending his time with L. He liked working with L, solving problems with him, closing in on Kira with him. He liked fighting him, both verbally and physically. He liked it when they had fights that weren’t so serious, that were more like sparring than them actually trying to hurt each other. He liked the banter they shared. He liked watching in horror as L refused to eat anything that wasn’t way too sugary to be allowed. He liked sharing a bed with him. He liked  _ L. _

He wanted to kiss L. He wanted to hold on to L. He wanted to stay with L when the Kira case was over.

He did not want to have sex with L.

It didn’t make any sense.

Light had never had a crush on anyone before. Because that’s what this was. It was a crush. But he knew that crushes were supposed to include sexual attraction. Especially at his age. He was 18. 18 year old boys were supposed to be dying to fuck at any given opportunity.

He supposed that if he did want to have sex with L, then he still might not have made a move, given that everything surrounding their situation would mean he’d be setting himself up for a lot of awkwardness very fast.

If L wanted to have sex with him, then what would he do?

Light just managed to suppress a shudder.

The idea of sex with L wasn’t repulsive, per se. When he’d thought that he’d be ‘willing to’ have sex with him, that had been the truth. In any other situation, Light would probably be okay with doing it. He liked L, and he trusted L, and he knew that he’d be safe with L.

But the situation they  _ were  _ in, was that Light was handcuffed to an older man, having barely consented to even that much. This older man had an undeniable level of power over him, and if L were to proposition Light as they were now, Light would feel pressured to comply. Even if logically he’d know that there wasn’t any pressure at all, because L wouldn’t do that. L may have been willing to bend the rules when it came to his investigation, but there were certain lines that Light was certain that even L wouldn’t cross, under any circumstances. And Light didn’t see any way in which the two of them having sex would help the investigation anyway. If anything, it would hinder it. L wasn’t going to try to seduce him while the investigation was ongoing.

The only way that they’d end up having sex would be if Light initiated it. Which he wasn’t going to do. Because he didn’t want to do that.

How was it possible that he could want to be close to someone, and even kiss them, without wanting to have sex with them?

L opened his eyes.

He met Light’s gaze.

There were a few seconds of silence.

Neither of them looked away.

“Light is staring,” said L.

“Light is sorry,” said Light.

“No he isn’t.”

“No,” said Light. “He isn’t.”

“Is there something on your mind?”

Light shrugged. “Nothing worth talking about.”

“I disagree,” said L. “Anything that you devote a significant amount of thought to should be shared, as-”

“Ryuuzaki I swear to God if you’re about to suggest that everything I think about could help with the Kira case then I will break your nose right now.”

A small smile appeared on L’s face. “Alright. I won’t say it.”

Light sighed. “It really was nothing to do with Kira. I have a life outside of all this, you know.”

L’s smile vanished. “You seem distressed.”

Light finally broke eye contact, his gaze retreating back to the ceiling. “I guess,” he said. “It’s not important.”

“Light,” said L. “I’m saying this not as an investigator, but as your friend. You can tell me what’s bothering you.”

And wasn’t that just the thing. They  _ were _ friends. L had already confessed that he’d been lying before, that time that L had called Light his ‘first ever friend’. Light hadn’t been surprised that it had been a lie. They’d barely known each other back then. But when you spend enough time trapped with another person, you either become their friend or their enemy, and these two had become friends. Even if L did end up using Light’s apparent inhumanness to add to his theory that Light was Kira, Light was sure that right now, L was asking out of genuine concern.

And L was a stubborn shit, so there was no way he was going to let this go.  _ And  _ Light was a terrible liar, so L would see right through any attempt to throw him off.

So Light was just going to have to suck it up and be as honest as he could bring himself to be.

“I think I might be broken,” he said.

L frowned. “How so?”

“It’s going to sound really stupid.”

“Try me.”

Well. Here goes.

“I’ve never wanted to have sex with anyone.”

L gestured for him to go on, and the dam broke.

“All the time while growing up, people would talk about it, and I never understood. I just didn’t get it? I still don’t. Why would anyone want to do that? Never in my life have I ever looked at someone and thought  _ ‘yes I would like to fuck this person’.  _ I just. Don’t get it. I thought I was gay for a really long time because I didn’t like girls, but then I realised that I don’t like boys either? At least not like that? The  _ most  _ I can do is tell myself that I’d be able to tolerate it, but it’s never been something that I  _ wanted _ to do. But it’s normal to want sex, isn’t it? So I’m not normal? There’s something wrong with me? I think there’s something wrong with me. There has to be.”

As Light finished his last sentence, he turned his head so he was looking back at L. At some point while Light was speaking, L had put his thumb to his mouth and was nibbling on the end of it. Light fought the urge to move his hand away. That couldn’t be healthy, L really should take better care of himself.

“I never used to like anyone in any way,” Light continued. “That changed recently. I’ve now liked a grand total of one person ever in my whole life. And I still don’t want to have sex with them. I’m so confused, and I’m pretty sure that people aren’t supposed to work like this. People are supposed to get crushes a lot easier than this, and they’re supposed to want to have sex with them. So why don’t I?” Light gave up. “And stop biting your thumb,” he said, reaching out and pulling L’s hand away from his mouth.

L glanced at his hand in surprise, as if he hadn’t realised what he was doing.

Light let go of him.

“Have you considered that you might be asexual?”

“What?” said Light.

L sat up and reached for his laptop.

“It’s a real sexuality,” said L as he opened the laptop, brought up the web browser, and opened a new tab. “The most recent studies estimate that as many as 1% of the world’s population are, though the real number is probably higher. People who are closeted have a tendency not to be willing to self describe as anything other than the assumed norm, even when their data would be anonymous. And that’s not even accounting for the people who don’t realise that they are, in some way, different.”

“But what  _ is  _ it?”

“It’s just as you described,” said L. He typed something into the address bar. “People who are asexual do not experience sexual attraction to others. From what you just told me, it sounds like you fit that description rather well.”

He handed his laptop to Light. Light pushed himself upright into a sitting position so he could read it.

The webpage that L had loaded said the same thing that L had just said. Asexuality is a sexual orientation characterised as a lack of sexual attraction to any gender. At least 1% of people are believed to be asexual.

Light scrolled down. The webpage went on to say that asexuality didn’t mean the same thing as celibacy or abstinence, and that people who were asexual were known to choose to have sex for a number of reasons. The webpage also said that people could have a sex drive and still be asexual, as asexual was about sexual attraction to others, not whether or not you could get aroused.

The webpage also touched on romantic orientations, and how they were different from sexual ones, and that while they lined up for a lot of people, they didn’t always.

Light hadn’t heard of any of this before.

He reached the bottom of the page and so was forced to stop scrolling. He stared at the screen without moving for a few seconds.

“Are you alright?” asked L.

“I don’t know,” said Light.

“That’s perfectly understandable,” said L.

“There are other people like me?”

“Yes,” said L. “Or at least, there are other people like you as far as your sexuality is concerned. Most people aren’t apparently amnesiac serial killers.”

Light didn’t deign that with a response.

“This mentioned romantic orientations. Do the prefixes it gave for sexualities work for those as well?”

“They do,” said L.

“You sure know a lot about this, huh,” said Light, scrolling back to the top of the page.

L shrugged. “I’m bisexual,” he said. “Generally when exploring about various queer indentities, you end up learning about those that aren’t your own as well. Plus, I  _ am _ a genius. It’s only natural that I’d know a lot about things.”

Light saw L’s attempt at humour for what it was and laughed softly.

“You don’t have to use any new words for yourself if you aren’t comfortable with it,” said L. “Labels are only useful when you apply them to yourself. But you aren’t broken. Not wanting to have sex is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Light mouthed the word.  _ Asexual. _ “No, I think I like it,” he said. “Everything makes a lot more sense now. I’m asexual.”

L nodded. “You asked about romantic orientations as well. Do you want to explore that further, or are you happy to leave your night of self discovery as it is?”

Light looked at L. “I’ve only ever liked one person. So, I know that I  _ can  _ experience romantic attraction, but that’s not a lot to go on.”

“No,” said L. “It’s more than enough to go on. You experience romantic attraction infrequently, or possibly only once you have formed a close bond with another person. This would make you greyromantic or demiromantic. Perhaps both.”

“You can be both?”

“You can be both,” said L. “You can also add specific labels according to gender if you like. That’s entirely up to you.”

Light handed the laptop back to L. “This is becoming very complicated.”

“Yes,” said L. “But I’m sure that you’re able to manage.”

Light didn’t respond. He was too busy thinking about everything that he’d just learnt.

He was asexual.

If he was remembering what the prefixes meant correctly, which he knew he was, then being greyromantic meant that he would rarely experience romantic attraction, and being demiromantic meant that he would only experience romantic attraction once he was already close with someone.

They both sounded like him. He’d never had a crush on anybody he’d been close with before meeting L, which pointed towards him being greyromantic, and he hadn’t even considered that he might like L until they’d already become very close, which pointed towards him being demiromantic.

“I think I’m both,” said Light. “And I also think that I’m still gay, as well as all of that. Is that possible?”

“It is,” said L. “It’s your orientation. You get to choose how to describe it.”

Light nodded.

“Are you feeling better now?”

Light nodded again. “Yes,” he said. “Much. Thank you.”

“It’s no problem,” L said as he shut the lid of his laptop and put it to the side. “We should both try to get back to sleep.”

“Yeah,” said Light. “We should.”

They both lay down properly and pulled the cover over themselves. They were facing each other, and neither of them closed their eyes.

“I don’t think I can,” said Light, a bubble of laughter coming through as he spoke.

“Light will be cranky if he doesn’t get enough sleep,” said L.

“I know that,” said Light. “But I don’t feel tired at all.”

“I suppose that’s understandable, given the conversation we just had. It’s a lot to take in at once”

There were a few moments of silence as they stared at each other.

“Hey Ryuuzaki.”

“Yes Light?”

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you realise you were bisexual?”

“I realised that I wanted to experiment with men just as much as I wanted to experiment with women. It’s not a very exciting answer, I’m afraid.”

Light smiled. “Of course. I’m not surprised that it would all seem so simple to you.”

“Because I’m a genius?”

Light sighed, but even he could hear that there was more fondness than exasperation in it. He hoped that L wouldn’t call him out on it. “Yes,” he said. “Because you’re a genius.”

L grinned. “I don’t think that I’m going to be able to get back to sleep either,” he said.

“Sorry about that.”

L waved dismissively. “I’d slept enough for now anyway. It’s unlikely that there will be any significant updates on the Kira case at this hour. How about we find a movie to watch?”

Light laughed. “Sure, if we can agree on one.”

L picked his laptop back up and opened it. They both sat back up.

“I’ve been meaning to rewatch the American one about the dinosaur park,” said L. “How does that sound to you?”

“I haven’t heard of it,” said Light.

“A group of scientists try to play God and resurrect long dead species of dinosaurs,” said L. “Their hubris ends up getting the better of them, and a lot of people die as a consequence of their actions.” He glanced at Light. “I think you might like it.”

Light sighed. It decidedly did  _ not  _ take a genius to figure out what L was getting at. “I’m happy to watch the dinosaur movie,” he said.

“Excellent,” said L, and he tracked it down online.

As L did so, Light took a moment to mentally go over what had happened.

It was the first time that he’d ever been completely grateful for everything that had been happening to him. If he hadn’t been handcuffed to L, then their conversation would never have happened, and Light knew that there was no way he’d have found out about asexuality on his own. He’d have carried on thinking that there was something wrong with him. Now he knew that what he felt, or rather what he didn’t feel, was normal. Now he knew that he wasn’t alone.

And L hadn’t grilled him on who his only crush ever was on.

Light had a feeling that he wasn’t off the hook with that. L apparently always needed to know everything about him, ostensibly to help with the Kira investigation, so it was only a matter of time before Light would have to defend himself against that one.

Or maybe L already knew the truth, and was choosing to show a sliver of mercy by not making Light say it out loud. L was smart enough that it wouldn’t surprise Light if that were the case.

Either way, L had helped Light massively, and hadn’t pushed him to talk about what he really didn’t want to talk about. L had been kind, and patient. L had recognised that this was serious.

There was a very real chance that Light was going to end up falling in love with him.

The movie started, and Light banished all those thoughts from his mind. It was a problem for future him. Present him was watching a dinosaur movie, he was  _ way _ too busy to worry about how deep his feelings for the man sitting next to him went.

And if the two of them spent the duration of the movie leaning against each other?

Well, that was nobody’s business but their own.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos mean the absolute world to me !!!!!!!
> 
> come say [hi!!](https://astralpenguin.tumblr.com/)


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